Access, ground, and the day the lorry arrives

A sauna cabin or a cold plunge is not a parcel. Depending on what you have chosen it will weigh somewhere between three hundred kilos and a tonne, it will arrive on a lorry that needs somewhere to stop, and it will need to travel from that lorry to the spot in your garden where it is going to live for the next decade.

The commonest way a delivery of this size goes wrong is not damage in transit. It is that the equipment physically cannot reach the place it is meant to go, and everybody finds this out on the day, with a driver waiting.

Measure the narrowest point, not the gate

Most people measure their gate. The gate is rarely the problem. The problem is usually the pinch point three metres beyond it: a drainpipe, a meter box, a wall mounted tap, a corner where a path turns and a fence stops you swinging wide.

Walk the whole route from where a lorry could realistically stop to where the equipment is going. Measure the narrowest width along that route, and measure the lowest overhead obstruction too, because a low branch or a carport beam catches more deliveries than you would think.

If the answer is that it will not fit, that is far better news in July than it is on the day.

Ground matters as much as width

Equipment this heavy is normally moved on a pallet truck or on rollers, and both want firm, reasonably level ground. Soft lawn in February is not firm ground. Loose gravel is not firm ground. A slope of more than a few degrees changes what two people can safely do, and may change the whole method.

Where the route is genuinely difficult there are honest options: track mats over grass, a longer route round the other side, a hired lift, or a crane. A crane sounds dramatic and often is not. For a garden with no side access at all, lifting over the house can be the simplest and least destructive answer, and it is worth pricing rather than dismissing.

The questions we ask before we dispatch anything

We would rather have a slightly tedious conversation with you in advance than a very expensive one on the day. Before anything leaves a manufacturer we want to know:

• Where the largest vehicle that can reach you would have to park, and whether that is a road with restrictions.
• The narrowest width and lowest height along the full route to the spot.
• What the ground is: grass, gravel, paving or decking, and how it behaves when wet.
• Whether there are steps, and if so how many and how deep.
• Who will be there on the day, because most deliveries of this size are kerbside unless arranged otherwise.

Photographs help more than measurements do. A picture of the side passage tells us in two seconds what a paragraph of dimensions takes ten minutes to establish.

Base, power and water, in that order

The base should be finished and cured before delivery, not after. A sauna wants a level, free draining base with air movement underneath. A plunge wants a base rated for the filled weight, which is a great deal more than the empty weight, and people underestimate this consistently. Water is heavy: a modest plunge holding six hundred litres is more than half a tonne of water before you count the shell.

Electrical work is the other thing that wants doing beforehand. An electric sauna heater above a certain rating, and any chiller unit, will need a suitable outdoor supply installed by a qualified electrician, and that is a job with a lead time of its own. Book it early. Nothing is more frustrating than a beautiful cabin sitting unusable for three weeks waiting on a spur.

Lead times, told straight

We quote lead times as they really are rather than as we would like them to be. If a manufacturer says eight weeks and our experience says twelve, we will tell you twelve. An honest twelve is a better experience than an optimistic eight that becomes fourteen, and it lets you book your groundworks and your electrician for the right week rather than the wrong one.

On the day

Have the route clear, have someone there, and have a plan for where the packaging goes. Check the equipment before the driver leaves, not after. If something looks wrong, photograph it and tell us the same day, because a claim raised immediately is a straightforward conversation and one raised three weeks later is not.

Then, once it is in and commissioned, the interesting part starts. That first cold morning is what all of this was for.